Tribes 2 // Mod Development Handbook GitHub

23 · Defend and Destroy

The Tribes 1 gametype restored, and the strongest evidence in this handbook that Sierra absorbed Classic’s work directly into the retail product — see 31 · The base ruleset and 38 · Classic 1.1 for the full provenance story. This page covers the mechanics; those cover who wrote it and how it ended up in base/scripts.vl2.

The rules

scripts/DnDGame.cs’s header, verbatim [script]:

Destroy objectives and hold switches.
Teams score 1 point for each switch held, and each Large Turret, Sensor, Generator, and Vehicle Station destroyed.
The map ends when one team destroys all the enemy objectives and holds all switches, or the timelimit expires.

Two win conditions, not one: destroy every enemy objective and hold every switch, or have the higher score when time runs out. A match can therefore end early on a clean sweep, which no other base gametype does — CTF and Siege both run to the clock or a score cap, never to “nothing left to attack.”

The scoring table

DnD has by far the most granular scoring of any base gametype — 39 separately named constants, set once near the top of the file and referenced by name everywhere else [script]:

Category Values
Combat Kill +5, headshot +1, turret kill +5, auto-turret kill +1, teamkill −5, death 0, suicide 0
Destroying a building Generator +10, vehicle station +8, solar panel +8, turret +6, sensor +4, everything deployable +1 to +3
Destroying a vehicle MPB +12, tank +8, bomber +8, Shrike +5, Wildcat +5, Transport +5, plus +2 per passenger aboard
Defending +5 for repelling an attack on an objective
Repairing Generator +8, solar +6, turret +4, everything else +1 to +4
Teamkilling equipment −10

The naming convention — SCORE_PER_DESTROY_GEN, SCORE_PER_REPAIR_SENSOR, SCORE_PER_DESTROY_MPB — is worth copying directly if you are building a scoring system with this many categories. Every award site in the file reads a name, not a number, so retuning DnD’s balance is a one-line change per category rather than a hunt through the file for a literal that might appear in five places.

The MPB is the single highest-value kill in the base game — +12, ahead of every other vehicle and every building. Consistent with section 31’s framing of the MPB as a serious mobile asset, and with the “deployable, high-value objective” that other gametypes and mods (Construction’s power-frequency systems, section 58) treat mobile infrastructure as.

The suicide line, and where it goes next

%game.SCORE_PER_SUICIDE = 0; // z0dd - ZOD, 8/19/02. No penalty for suicide! Was -10

That comment is not incidental. Classic 1.1’s changelog lists, almost verbatim, “Committing suicide no longer incurs a -10 penalty to a players score” (section 38). Both files are z0dd’s, dated the same autumn — the DnD scoring decision and the Classic-wide rule change are the same design instinct applied in two places, and this is the line where you can watch it happen. Removing a suicide penalty matters specifically for an objective gametype: a player who needs to reset position to defend a switch should not be taxed for the tool that gets them there fastest.

Objectives and switches, mechanically

DnD tracks two distinct kinds of target, scored differently:

Objectives are the buildings themselves — generators, sensors, turrets, vehicle stations — destroyed once, scored once, gone for the rest of the match.

Switches are held, not destroyed, and pay out continuously while your team controls them (+1 per switch per scoring interval, per the rules text). This is a different reward shape from every objective score above it: destruction is a one-time event, holding is a rate. A team that captures switches early and successfully defends them accumulates score for the rest of the match without further action, which is precisely the “hold and defend” playstyle DnD’s Tribes 1 ancestor was built around.